A brand is a result, not a tactic. One cannot go about branding an organization or a product or a service; the organization, product, or service is what creates the brand. (italics mine). In a brilliant twist, the experts have bottled an end and sold it as a means. (emphasis mine).

Lucas sees a connection between the decline in advertising and the rise of branding as a business religion. He points to a 14% drop in Madison Avenue employment from 2000 to 2005. I think it’s more likely that both are symptoms — there is correlation but not necessarily a causal connection.

In my view, the rise of branding with its focus on “being understood” and “knowing who you are” comes from the increasingly narcissistic mood of the culture. And that in turn might be flowing from the trends which have conspired to make “one” — the self — into the ultimate economic unit.

Whatever the cause, we agree on the results: the advertising world focuses on “what we say” and “how we say it”. But the reality is that true branding, minus the hype, is really just “what the business does.” Conley cites Jiffy mix, Disney, and Apple as his examples of strong brands that are strong because of their product, not their advertising. And my personal favorite, In-N-Out Burger:

The $310 million In-N-Out Burger chain, another iconic brand that rarely advertises or speaks to the press, has been putting the rest of the fast-food industry to shame for years. McDonald’s spent an estimated $1.5 billion on branding efforts last year, producing little more than one day’s worth of sales more per store than In-N-Out. Have you ever met anyone who’s had an In-N-Out Burger who doesn’t believe it’s one of the best burgers they’ve ever had? Meanwhile, just who, exactly, is really “lovin’ it”?

For colleges, the message is clear: focus on the delivery of a transformational education experience in keeping with the traditions and values of the school. And in the marketing area, focus on authentic portrayals of how real students are actually experiencing that transformative time in their lives. In that way the authentic brand for that college will emerge. And the branding techniques that are so faddishly au courant, can be left to the McDonalds’ of the world to obsess on.

Postscript on another great summer read:

Today it seems normative for members of a family, company, team, or band to find the current of success more rewarding when they wade into the deep waters alone. Fame and fortune are easier to manage solo, without the vulnerability and accountability of team participation. Using music as a metaphor, it’s easy to think of examples from my generation: the Beatles; Peter Cetera; Michael Jackson; Paul Simon; Enya. Of course, the ones whose sound was defined by the team brand, rather than individual stars, are also noteworthy: the Beach Boys; the Rolling Stones.

Enjoying some personal recharge time in San Diego, I met a couple of committed walkers who taught me some great insights into authenticity as a personal and institutional lifestyle.

I was climbing Cowles Mountain, the highest spot in San Diego county. It’s a great spot to enjoy the sunrise — an hour up, 15 minutes down. While on the way, I stopped to rest and as Del (on the right) passed with his friend, we struck up a conversation. I asked him about walking as metaphor of life, and he hit me right between the eyes with, as Kenny Rogers put it, an ace that I could keep. Del’s formula?

“I have two feet. The first is rethinking/change. The second is confidence/assertiveness.” (I’m translating from more religious terminology – repentance and faith). Del went on (I’m paraphrasing): “When I start out, I have to listen and respond to my environment. I need to rethink, based on who I impact and where I don’t measure up. Then, I am free to confidently go forward, seize opportunities, be effective at what I can do and who I am. And then comes another step of listening, responding, rethinking.”

Del’s comments inspired me with a fresh insight into both personal and institutional authenticity. Being “me”, honestly projecting who I am, is not enough if I want to be perceived as authentic — if I want to be an organic and productive enterprise. I also have to respond to “you”. I must be committed to self-improvement, and work that out through a cycle of receiving and sending, give and take, listening and expressing.

The brand of an institution does not emerge from what it repeats about itself. As John Moore said in Brand Autopsy recently, it flows from being, not “branding”.

Being “me”, personally or institutionally, involves a recognition that if a “me” has value because of my story, my unique experiences and perspective, then every “you” has value, too. If one individual is golden, a diverse community brings infinite riches.

If there were only one university it would be a boring and provincial world of ideas. But Oxford has greater value because there is Cambridge. Harvard is interesting because it shares many qualities with the other Ivies, as well as because of the nuances which differentiate it.

Each “me” becomes actualized as an authentic brand because of its response to its environment. I can attempt to assert my independence from my peers, but when I do so it only cheapens my actual brand, the authentic “me” which is not what I think of myself, but what I actually am as an organic member of a community of interrelated, interdependent organisms. My ability to project a distinct perspective, a valuable set of values, tarnishes whenever I grow sluggish in my efforts to be accountable.

In fact, I would argue that if there is one foot more important than another in Del’s metaphor, it would be the rethinking foot. By rethinking and changing as rapidly as possible to changing conditions and needs, I earn the right to assert my identity as valuable, as useful, as worth consideration. I have a valid reason to hold forth my brand. And I have a decent chance, thus, of my brand being perceived as authentic.

So did Starbucks set out to create a brand via advertising, marketing, persuasion?

Here’s what John Moore, their marketing guy during the startup years has to say:

His point: building the business created the brand. No doubt Starbucks had a clearly defined graphic strategy, did advertising, all of that. Any organization needs to do those things. But the perceptions in the minds of the consumers were formed, not from the persuasive speech, the Starbucks advertising … but from the actual experience of committed Starbucks people delivering excellent products in an environment that was carefully designed to be a “third place” in the customers’ lives.

This belief that authenticity can be created is what gets companies in trouble. Authenticity comes from evolution, not from creation. No magic pill exists and no big bang will cause a company to become authentic. The honor of being authentic is earned only over time and through consistent, deliberate actions. Same goes for building a corporate culture. A company that respects its employees and treats its employees like family will be rewarded with being viewed by insiders and outsiders as an authentic company.

How do these topics relate? “Authenticity is not something you can create. It evolves.” A student whose life was saved by Librescu is quoted in the tribute video as saying, (paraphrasing), “What Prof. Librescu did was just a final proof of what he was like as a person.” In other words, Professor Librescu did not inspire anyone with his words. Nor did he inspire anyone with an action that could be separated from a pattern, an ethos, a characer.

For Librescu, his ability to inspire us evolved from his life as a Holocaust survivor, as a person who knew how to carry pain but show love to friends and family, as a person who knew how to recognize evil, and to resist it with actions, not words. One instinctive, adroit action allowed him in the few seconds of crisis to impede the evil — to place his own life in the balance next to his students and give greater weight to those students. He inspired 81% of the respondents (compared to at most 4% for other worthy nominees) because his actions revealed him to be an authenticly good man, who might today be working on in quiet anonimity if it weren’t for the extraordinary circumstances that day at Virginia Tech. Were it not for a madman with a gun, only his students and fellow faculty would recognize his value, because the authenticity of his character would only be manifest by a kind smile for a lonely coed or an early appointment to tutor a struggling student. Too bad we all had to be inspired by his unexpected but authentic, in-character next step of blocking a gunman’s view of his class with his own body.

Thankfully, most colleges can focus their attention on the routine challenges of inspiring their students, instead of frantically trying to save their lives. But may we focus on inspirational actions rather than inspirational words.

The whole business of brands, perceptions, image and identity follow this principle: that the brand is in reality just the expression of what is. The brand of an institution flows from 10,000 choices by faculty, administration, trustees, alumni — across an institutional lifetime. And the sum of those choices is not so much a measure of absolute virtue as it is a definition of the personality of that college community. It’s what makes a Harvey Mudd different from an MIT … an Oberlin different from a Whitman. Each brand is authentic, if what it claims in words is the same as what it delivers in fact; and as with Librescu, the stresses of the current moment will merely reveal what is already there, in the character and the values and the heart.

When a man or an institution acts in a way that is authentically good … it’s an inspiration to us all.